I did a lot of research on this when I first arrived in Korea because my approach to correction relies a lot on anticipating their problems (rather than making a random list of things that come up, as I seem to remember the CELTA-way being). I’m afraid I’ve forgotten where said research was done, but it’s been rewritten, added to and edited many times since so hopefully I’ve come up with something reasonably original and worthwhile for those who are in the situation I was.

I’ve also written a big list of Konglish and Worksheets for Koreans that deal with both Konglish and some of the typical errors below:

Typical Korean problems with English grammar

Actions/ Changes and states

– Be married and get married, e.g. “Did you get married?” for “Are you married?”

– Put on clothes and wear clothes

– Have a cold and catch a cold

Countable and uncountable

– “alphabets”/ “letters (of the alphabet)”, “families”/ “members of your family”, “vocabularies”/ “pieces of vocabulary”, “staffs”/ “members of staff”/ “employees”, “gangs”/ “gang members”/ “gangsters”, “my alumni”/ “member of the same university”, etc.

Determiners

– Whole, e.g. “Whole of my friends are students”, “The whole members of our team walked onto the field.”, “He drank whole the wine in the bottle.” and “He gives the whole money he earns to his wife.”

Future

– “Have a plan to” for “be planning to”

– Using “I have a meeting” for “I’m meeting up with friends”

– “promise” to mean “arrangement” (same in Japanese and some other languages)

– Not giving excuses for not making arrangements, e.g. “I can’t meet at that time because I am busy” or “At ten o clock I have something else on. Can we make it another time?” (both rather rude ways of brushing someone off in English!) (same in many cultures)

– Confusion between “expect” and “look forward to” (same in Japanese and some other languages)

Linkers (all the same in Japanese)

– Linking two sentences with “so” when it should be linking two clauses in one sentence

– Ditto with “because”

– Using both “so” and “because” in the same sentence

– Ditto with “although” and “but”

– Confusion between “at last” and “lastly”/ “last of all”

– Confusion between “even if”, “even though” and sometimes “even”

– Confusion between “in case” and “providing…”

– Confusing “except” and “apart from”, e.g. “Which places have you visited except the cathedral?”

Missing verbs and using other words as verbs

– “I didn’t my best”

– “I absented from…”

– “I will away for the weekend”

– “Up” and “down” as verbs, e.g. “I hope the economy will up”

Modals

– Confusing “want”, “hope” and “wish”, e.g. “I want him to live forever”, “I want it to be less heavy” and “I wish that you get better soon” (same in Japanese and some other languages)

Passive

– Some verbs that we never use in the passive almost always used in the passive by Koreans, e.g. disappear, appear, occur, happen, exist, consist, e.g. “The clouds were disappeared in the afternoon”. I tend to tell them that “disappeared” in the passive is only used as a euphemism for assassinated! (same in Japanese)

– “was changed” when they can/ should use “changed”, e.g. “After two years there my situation was changed”

– Ditto for increased, e.g. “The population has been increased greatly”

Past tenses

– Past Perfect to express the distant past (rather than comparing two past times)

Possessives

– Quite a lot of examples of “your” where we wouldn’t use it, e.g. “Can I take your message?” and “Thank you for your invitation”

– Some similar ones with “my”, e.g. “I moved my house”, “I want to buy my car” (same in Japanese)

Prepositions

– “The same with”

– Unnecessary prepositions, e.g. “Go to there.” and “Go to abroad.”

Present Perfect

– “Do you have the experience of” for “Have you ever?”

– Putting in an unnecessary “until now”

– “First time” without Present Perfect, e.g. “This is my first time to visit England.”, “Is it your first time to eat kimchi?” and “This is the first time for me to see a French movie.”

Singular and plural

– “One of” with singular nouns, e.g. “One of the cake” (perhaps because the word ‘one’ is singular)

– “a” with general meanings, e.g. “In my spare time, I like to see a movie” and “Bill’s hobby is climbing a mountain” (always the same movie and mountain??)

There is/ are

– Trying to avoid there is/ are, e.g. “My family is three” or “The group members are four”

– Missing “there is/ there are” or trying to use “have” instead, e.g. “In Korea have four seasons”

Time expressions

– Confusion between “in two days” and “two days after”, and between “three weeks ago” and “three weeks before” because, as in many languages, there is no distinction between these expressions in Korean

– Confusion between “until” and “by”, e.g. “do it by Friday” and “do it until Friday” (same in Japanese and some other languages)

– Confusing “at the moment” and “at that moment”

Wanna and gonna

– Using wanna and gonna in sentences you can’t, e.g. “I’m gonna Italy next month” (it is only used with a verb following it, not when “go” is the main verb)

– Using wanna and gonna when it is too informal, e.g. during IELTS speaking or in neutral writing

Typical Korean problems with English vocabulary

Adjectives

– Lots of adding unnecessary words to descriptions, e.g. “It is black colour”, “It is round shape”, “His age in 32”, “Its weight is heavy”, “Its height is tall”, “Its taste is delicious” and “It’s cost/ price is expensive”

– Confusion between “sad” and “upset”, e.g. “I was sad because of how he described me and so I cried”

Convenient

– Using the word “convenient” in a too general way, e.g. “Living in the city is convenient” (How? For what?)

– Using “if it is convenient with you” in too informal situations, and using similar expressions to ask for favours e.g. “if you are convenient”

Clothes

– Confusing “put on” and “wear” for clothes

– There are more words for “wear” in Korean than in English, so students often avoid it and so miss out on easy expressions like “wear earrings” and “wear make up”

Education

– Using “grade” for university instead of “year”, e.g. “When I was in the third grade at university”

– Using language for first degree for higher degrees – “My PhD major is…”/ “When I graduate from my PhD…”

Families

– Over-use of “marry” for “get married” or “be married”, e.g. “He married for fifty one years.”

– Overuse of “raised”, e.g. “I was born and raised in Pusan”

Free time

– “I rested” for “I took it easy/ I pottered around the house”

– Confusion between “play with my friends”, “hang out with my friends” and “meet up with my friends”/ “go out with my friends”, especially people using age-inappropriate phrases

Health

– Confusion between “have” and “catch”, e.g. “I caught a cold for two weeks”

Status

– Trying to improvise expressions or use wrong English expressions to, e.g. “my senior”

Typical Korean problems with English functional language

Advice

– You’d better used to mean “should”/ “ought to”, so need to be asked “What will happen if I don’t??”

Agreement and disagreement

– Confusing “agree with” and “agree to”, e.g. “My parents agreed with my plan to take a gap year”

– Lots of positive noises to mean they understand that could be misinterpreted as agreement

– “Agree”

– Silence and/ or only facial expressions to show disagreement

Apologies

– Too general or no excuse for actions, i.e. rarely using the typical English apology – reason – promise of future action structure

Arrangements

– No or too general reason given for refusing invitations, e.g. “I have another appointment”

– “Will” used instead of Present Continuous to show prior arrangements, with consequent danger of offense, e.g. “Sorry, but I will do something else then”

Generalisation

– Lots of problems with Almost, e.g. “almost people” and “I almost go the gym” for “almost all people” and “I almost always go the gym”

– Lots of over-generalisation, e.g. “Korean people think that…”

Likes and dislikes

– Rarely if ever understand the distinction between “I really don’t like” and “I don’t really like”

– “My most favourite”

Opinions

– “How about…?” for “What do you think about…?” (so need explaining that “How about you?” means “And you?” and “How about that?” means “And that?”)

Sentences stems and sentence starters

– “As you know” over-used, including when there is no way of knowing whether that person does know or not. Usually best replaced with “As you may know” or “As many people know”, especially in IELTS

– Mis-use of “frankly”. Not sure what they are trying to say, but guess it is similar to the Japanese expression “jitsu wa” and so sometimes used to mean “Sorry but…” or “Actually…”

Telephoning

– “Thank you for your calling”

– Giving their name in situations where you might not in English, maybe making the person receiving the call think “Jae-young? Do I know a Jae-young??”

Thanks

“Thank you for your helping/ coming.”

Typical Korean problems with writing in English

Punctuation

– Capital letters after commas, especially after linking words, e.g. “However, Things didn’t work out as he had expected”

– Not knowing that starting sentences with “And” and “But” is informal

– Single clause sentences starting with “because” and “so”, e.g. “I went to the shop. Because I wanted to buy bread”

– Similar problems with other linking expressions

Emailing

– Using “To whom it may concern” when it should be “Dear Sir or Madam” (it should only be used when you really have no idea who or how many people will see it, e.g. legal documents and open letters, e.g. job references that employees take with them when they leave)

– Avoiding names, e.g. “Dear my friend” or “Dear teacher”

– Starting all emails with their own name, e.g. “Dear John. This is Ja-Young.”

– Always putting “Hi” after the greeting, e.g. “Dear Jane. Hi.”

– Using “Thank you for your cooperation” when other expressions like “Thanks in advance” would be more suitable